Tetris For the Iphone/Itouch
Tetris has been released for the Iphone and is published by Electronic Arts. I saw this in the app store for $4.99 (50 % off holiday sale) and I thought to myself, “You need to pick this up!” As soon as I clicked the purchase button I felt some sort of nostalgia come over me. I instantly flashed back to 1992, walking out of a store (the name I can’t remember at this moment) with my grandmother who had just bought my Nintendo GameBoy with Tetris and Blades of Steel – At least this time I didn’t have my parents screaming at me for this purchase of Tetris.
Nothing new on the game play front, with the exception of the ability to listen to your Itunes music collection while you play Tetris. It does feature 4 original soundtrack songs. The game features 2 modes called Marathon and Magic, and 15 Levels. Marathon mode features level 1 through 15, can you beat all levels? I couldn’t get pass level 9. The difficulty in this game sky rockets from levels 9-15. Magic Mode offers special tools that take advantage of the Iphones capabilities. Magic mode gives you 5 powers that you earn throughout the levels to manipulate the pieces to your advantage so you can clear all the lines. The powers are Bubble Wrap, Magic Crayon, Wrecking Ball, Minimizer and Smashdown .Like most other Iphone games you touch the screen and drag ,rotate drop the pieces where you want them to go, just tab the piece on screen and the block will flip positions allowing you to place it just perfectly. Like most other Iphone games you touch the screen and drag the pieces where you would like them to go, simply tap the piece on screen and the block will flip positions allowing you to place it just perfectly. The controls are just perfect. The touch screen suits Tetris. There have been a lot of complaints that Tetris will crash your Iphone/Itouch.
If you are a Tetris fan and have an Iphone or Itouch and are looking for a game to play, I recommend you pick up Tetris before it goes back to regular price.
read moreGears of War 2 Combustible Map Pack Review
On December 15th 2008 at the Spike Videogame Awards Cole Train made a special appearance where he announced the Combustible map pack for GoW2 that would be released that night at 12am PST and cost 800 MS points (10 Dollars)
Here is the launch trailer courtesy of 1up.com/Gamevideos
I know I am bit behind on posting about the map pack but I wanted to have sometime with the 3 new maps before posting about them.
Flood:
Flood is a smaller map that has Imulsion throughout the level, watch your step you don’t want to catch fire and die. I was a bit skeptical of this map at first because it is a smaller map but after playing with it extensively I find that I love the intense fire fights that this map offers.
An abandoned fuel station why not blow up the tanks and scare the enemy or head up the second level of station and control the map. There are only 2 ways upstairs plant those grenades on the stairs and then get ready to shotgun any enemy that decides to come up the evaluator. The team that usually controls the second level wins the game. This map is a fun map it really is but is not suited for all game modes and is probably the weakest map of the map pack.
Gold Rush:
Is a two level map that has a sniper on the second level and a mortar on the first level. Decisions, Decisions where do you go? Do you take the mortar and try and destroy the enemy on the second level or do you go after the sniper and blow off the enemy’s head on the lower level.
Conclusion
There was not hints dropped by Epic Games that DLC maps were coming and they came quick after launching the game. GoW2 was still suffering from matchmaking issues and adding more maps to the fold may have not been the best thing for it. The marketing campaign to have Cole come up on screen at the Spike Video game awards and announce the Conbustible Map Pack and that it
read moreBeejive IM for the Iphone/Itouch
The Beejive Company has released version 2.0 of the widely popular IM client on the Iphone. It may come with a steep price tag of $15.99(!!!) but it is worth every penny and much much more. It supports a wide variety of IM clients and is probably one the most intuitive applications available.
As soon as I downloaded the application and synced up my Iphone 3g on the Rogers network, I doubled clicked the application, added my MSN account, Google talk account and logged into both at the same time with zero problems. The tabs of the application are Buddy list, favourites, chats, accounts and more. As soon as I logged into MSN I was surprised to see my groups were imported as is, does it ever make communicating a lot easier when you have your contacts sorted into groups. Once you closed the application it doesn’t log you out, it simply will email you a notification of a chat if you have push email service enabled. You can also send and receive files with this application. I guess the single biggest feature it is it doesn’t kill your battery. That’s right it’s very gentle on your battery life!
Overall this is by the single best IM application in the Itunes Application store. I can’t wait to see what future updates this application holds.
Happy New Year and Our Game Of The Year !!!!!
Ah yes, the obligatory BEST OF 2008 list. It must be New Year’s Eve.
Flakes and I looked back on all the games we’d played this year to see if we could pick a favourite. Last fall we saw one of the busiest release seasons ever. With so many great games it was hard to pick one winner. Flakes and I ultimately couldn’t come to a unanimous verdict.
Here then are our Top 2 Games of the Year. We’ve put up a poll so that you can weigh in and cast your vote. Who got it right: Flakes or Darth
Tehflakes’ GOTY:
Metal Gear Solid 4 – Playstation 3
Released earlier this year, it may not be the “savior” Sony Executives were hoping it would be, but it did help sell some PS3 consoles and did rank well in the sales charts. MGS4 was by far the best game both in the franchise and for the PS3 this year. The controls were “westernized” which added to the overall experience. The game play was very intense and challenging as Snake showed signs of old age. There was a lot of talk regarding the cut scenes, both good and bad. Overall, there were a lot of cut scenes that told the story and wrapped up the story brilliantly. Metal Gear Solid 4 can be summed up by saying you were treated to great game play and a fantastic cinematic experience.
DarthAlbert III’s GOTY:
Fallout 3 – PS3
With its expansive terrain, detailed stats building, in depth leveling system, and unique characters, Fallout 3 plays more like an excellent D&D quest than anything else. You can go (almost) anywhere and do (almost) anything. Want to kill the Sheriff of Megaton? Do it! Want to help survivors? Go for it. Want to extort them and kill them anyway? Up to you. But Fallout 3 is more than making decisions; it’s an epic moral battleground.
I’ve played morality based RPGs before (Knights of the Old Republic is one of my favourite games) but Fallout 3 is the first game that has forced me to question my own morals and stray from the light. In games like KotOR, there are clear distinctions between black and white, good and evil. Also, there’s the knowledge that no matter what path you choose, you’ll still have plenty of money and allies to buy and fight your way out of trouble. Not so in Fallout. When wandering a post apocalyptic world can one afford to lose the credits he or she is offered for performing good deeds? I walk the path of ultimate good (despite my name) in all morality based games. At least, I did before Fallout. Now, stealing a clip of ammo or hacking into a restricted computer could be the difference between life and death for my character. Morals be damned, I’m surviving over here.
Yes, Fallout has great graphics and sound. Yes, Fallout has engrossing environments and unique item systems. Yes, Fallout has an amazingly laid out story with strong characters. Fallout has all these things, but so do other games. Fallout wins for me because it does what every videogame strives to do. It firmly places the player in the shoes of the main character and creates an immersive, unbelievably realistic world where anything can, and will, happen. I just can’t get enough.
read moreCall of Duty®: World at War Review
Call of Duty: World at War (aka CoD: WaW) is the follow up to the smash hit Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare developed by Infinity Ward. CoD: WaW is developed by Treyarch Studios who brought you such awful titles like Call of Duty 3. CoD3 was one of the first games I played on my Xbox 360 and, well, let’s just say I didn’t keep the game for very long. With the huge success of Modern Warfare, Treyarch has learned the valuable lessons that made Call of Duty 4 so popular and what provided it with such a long shelf life.
One of the advantages Activision has with its Call of Duty franchise is that it rotates developers each year. Treyarch took full advantage of the Call of Duty 4 engine; the environments are stunning however there wasn’t an improvement over the CoD4 graphics. As soon as I received the flamethrower in the story mode, I caught myself on several different occasions setting grass and trees on fire just because it looked cool. The audio was exceptionally well done and the voiceovers were good. The soundtrack was something I really liked about the game. There’s nothing like playing as American solider and hearing some classic rock in the background to get you pumped up to shoot enemies or blow things up. It didn’t quite work the same for me when I was playing as a Russian Solider.
One of the first things you will notice when you start the single-player campaign is the level of realistic violence. Body parts get dismembered and there is a lot of blood. These visuals should make you realize how violent and bloody WWII actually was. You could be walking through a jungle environment with your flamethrower setting grass and trees on fire and then suddenly have a Japanese Solider come out of a trench and start attacking you. Overall I found the single player campaign very fun. The action was well paced but the campaign wasn’t very long. One of my major concerns lay in the fact I found my character seemed to have a big target on his head and his AI buddies were just along for the ride. I was constantly under siege with grenades. No matter where I was the on the map they found me. My saving grace? There are a ton of checkpoints in each level.
There was a level in Call of Duty 4 called “Death from Above” that put you in control of the guns on an AC-130 Spectre gunship. You played the level from the perspective of a person watching a thermal television. That level was one of the best levels of CoD4 as it put real war into perspective. World at War tried to copy this feat by having you man one of three weapons aboard a plane and rotate from weapon to weapon. When you’re not blowing up U-boats, you are rescuing survivors. I’m not quite sure what Treyarch was going for in terms of mood, but it felt sloppy. Overall, it felt out of place.
The co-op campaign takes a page of out Halo 3 by offering campaign scoring, which is a nice addition, and a new feature called death cards. What are death cards you ask? They are similar to the skulls found in Halo 3. Different death cards can be used to add extra challenges to the game.
The weakest part in the Call of Duty: World at War package is the multiplayer. It feels like they did an export of CoD4 and added World War 2 guns and character models. CoD: WaW didn’t innovate or improve on anything from CoD4’s high ranked multiplayer mode, giving CoD4 players little reason to leave familiar territory for something new.
Conclusion
Call of Duty World at War is a very fun game that tells a very good story about the Pacific Rim. Treyarch vastly improved their performance on this edition of Call of Duty but didn’t do enough to set it apart and make me want to leave Call of Duty 4. The “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” attitude seems to have been applied to this game. I’m not sure it justifies spending $59.99 on this game during a holiday season filled with so many Triple A titles.
Scene It?: Box Office Smash
For someone who isn’t a big movie buff but plays casuals games with his significant other, who claims to be a movie buff, last years Scene It: Last Camera Action was quite the hit in my household. This year’s version Scene It: Box Office Smash brings some new features, hopefully some DLC packs and most importantly a real chance to win at this game on a game to game basis.
There are 22 different puzzles or challenges, if you will; including a few new types of questions such as, Pixel Fix which requires you to name the movie based on an 8 bit video of the movie. Celebrity Ties is a series of clues in which you must link the two actors to a movie. Personally, I really enjoyed the filling in the quotes puzzle. They gave you a quote with a series of blanks on it and provide you with 4 possible solutions to the answer. Also, there is Which is Which, where they give you a series of four still photos and you have to link two of them to the name of the movie. There are hundreds of questions however they tend to repeat after awhile. The movies in this game range from the 60’s to 2008.
Some other highlights were the overall pacing/feel to the game – it felt quicker but, needless to say, sneaking a game in before dinner was still completely doable.
One of my biggest issues with the original Scene It was simply that the game wasn’t fun playing by your lonesome as compared to with another person or a group of people. This problem has been averted! They have fixed it in this edition by adding a feature which allows you to play on Xbox Live. Furthermore, they are promising downloadable content. Hopefully this comes sooner then later and the pricing isn’t overbearing.
I didn’t pick up the big button controllers. I don’t think there was much difference from the originals. The fact that I couldn’t pause the game to get a refill on my beverage was quite a nuisance. Also, the multipliers in the Final Cut were bothersome. It allows the player to earn multipliers based on the number of questions correctly answered in a row. It went from 1x to 2x to 5x. It can either make things really close or you can get blown out of the water. It can be a huge “cut” if you aren’t familiar with the movie clip shown.
Overall, this is a great addition to the causal line up for the 360 and should have families playing it over the holidays. However, with the repeat questions already appearing, I really hope the DLC comes quickly and is reasonably priced.
read more